Billy Altman

Combine a spring break weekend, a St. Patrick's Day celebration, and the final day of a South by Southwest music festival and you can imagine the insanity reigning supreme all over downtown Austin on Saturday.

I've been attending the South By Southwest music festival for many years, but I can't ever recall ever hearing the particular sound I encountered late Friday night at Stubb's: squealing. And I mean the kind of squealing that means only one thing – female hormones on the march.

The first full day at the 2012 South By Southwest music festival was really all about the ladies, as a number of talented women from all points of the stylistic compass made their presence felt at various hot spots throughout the day and night.

It’s a well-known story: A little over 2 decades ago, a Nashville record executive familiar with aspiring singer/songwriters Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn suggested that the two team up and see what might happen — and the rest was, indeed, history.

Listening to Lady Gaga’s relentless new CD, I can’t help but think of those old TV commercials in which a housewife would unscrew the cap to a bottle of Ajax liquid cleanser and unleash a “White Tornado” on her kitchen floor. Except in Gaga’s case, it’s a (bleached) white tornado being unleashed on every dancefloor of the planet.

Given the ubiquity these days of performers whose acts seem to rely as much (or more) on technology as on talent, fans of genres like Americana can be forgiven for fretting that fretboards could soon wind up on the endangered species list.